Shards once believed to have fallen from a UFO which crash landed in England have been reemerged nearly 60 years after they were first discovered.

The fragments of the 'Silpho saucer' were found inside a cigarette tin inside a storeroom inside London's Science Museum.

The discovery of the 'copper-bottomed flying saucer' on Silpho Moor near Scarborough sparked huge newspaper interest when discovered in 1957 - just a few weeks after Russia's first Sputnik satellite was launched.

Tests were carried out on the 17-inch wide metal saucer, which weighed 14kg and it had hieroglyphics emblazoned across it, similar to those observed at Roswell UFO site in New Mexico.

The fragments of the 'Silpho saucer' were rediscovered inside a cigarette tin inside a storeroom inside London's Science Museum